Burdens
by Jedi Boadicea
Summary: A somber look into Orihime's thoughts, during the most difficult moments of her life. See author page for spoiler warnings.


_Author's Note: This piece came to me totally out of nowhere (though I've always been struck by the images mentioned), and I had to take a break from Hitsugaya fixation in order to write it. Most of the references to specific details – actions, scenes, etc – relate to the manga, including the recent chapters. So while it will probably still make at least some sense if you've only watched the anime, the specific allusions won't mean much to one not familiar with the manga. _

_And also, the legend mentioned? Totally real. Needless to say, I very, very, very strongly suspect that this is not coincidental, especially with the new focus on events as shown in chapter 223… _

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

**BURDENS**

She knows she is not the strongest girl in school. That doesn't bother her. Even though she wasn't strong enough to stop those girls from cutting her hair, even though she rarely wins at sports or races, she is a happy girl, she is, and she knows that her strength is enough to get her through, to have fun at all those things which she knows are only just games in the end, only just games.

But today she is strong enough, she must be strong enough. She must be fast enough. The street is long, and time is short, and she must be stronger than she's ever been.

She knows she is not the smartest girl in school. Her grades are good, and her teachers like her, and it's true that the work doesn't challenge her nearly as much as trying to make her lunch does, but in spite of all that she doesn't think of herself as smart. She is who she is, and she is smart enough to get by, smart enough to be happy, smart enough to know that saying those girls had cut her hair would only make her brother sad, and so she says nothing.

But today she must be smart enough to have made the right choice, because she has chosen her direction, and now there is no turning back, and if it is not the right choice then it will be too late, too late.

She knows that her name comes from a legend of stars, and in that legend Orihime was a Princess of Heaven, daughter of a heavenly Emperor.

Many years from this moment, the legend will reshape her life in ways that not even her rich imagination could have dreamed.

But today, today she is still ignorant, and naïve, and more afraid than she will ever be, even when facing legends made true.

Today she wishes for strength and determination worthy of a princess, so that she can get to the clinic in time, get there in time, get there in time.

Her brother's bleeding body is a heavy weight on her small back today, but she cannot let the burden pull her down. He is depending on her, even if he is too delirious now to know it. Today, Orihime will be the big sister, the one who makes the choices, the one who protects. She owes him that. She owes him that. She needs the chance to tell him she's sorry that he went away looking so sad. It was her fault, and now she needs to fix it.

When the clinic finally comes into view, her legs are burning, her back is aching, she is bent so low under the weight of her burden that one of her brother's arms has slipped forward over her shoulder and his fingers are bumping along on the floor. His knuckles leave drops of blood on the pavement wherever they touch. She knows that her school uniform is stained with blood. She wonders if she'll be able to wash it out. She doesn't know why or how she can think such things now, but she does.

At the door, she cannot move for a moment, cannot think how she will manage to knock or ring a doorbell without dropping her brother's body, and for the first time since she picked him up off the street she wants to cry again.

But Inoue Orihime knows there is no time for tears. Her brother has no time.

"Hold on, onii-chan, hold on, hold on," she says it over and over again, holding his arm close to her chest with one hand, and reaching out with the other to push the doorbell with a shaking finger. There is blood on _her_ fingers too. She leaves a red stain on the doorbell button. She should apologize for that. She should clean it up somehow.

Hours pass before the door opens. She thinks she hears someone down the street crying out, something about a little girl and a wounded man. It's still so early in the morning. No one noticed that a car had swung down the street and destroyed her life. Too early for anyone to help her carry her brother away. She would not have wanted their help. This is hers to do. She has to say she's sorry. She has to say she's sorry.

When the door opens, all she sees is orange hair. Strange, orange hair. Wide eyes.

She tries to say something, but suddenly she can't seem to breathe. Her brother feels twice as heavy as before. Her knees begin to buckle and she falls to them, catching herself on the doorstep with one palm on the ground.

There is yelling in the clinic now. Pounding footsteps.

Someone is trying to take her brother away from her.

"Onii-chan…"

"It's all right, it's all right, I have him, I'm going to help him, let him go, little one, I have him."

She does not know this voice, but it is deep, and warm, and full of promise and care. It reminds her of her brother's voice, and so she lets him go, she lets him go, and she will never hold him again.

Someone takes her by the hand and leads her inside, to a chair. She wants to stay with her brother, but she doesn't know where he has gone.

A little girl, she realizes. Younger than her. A little girl is still holding her hand, and another girl is bringing a wet cloth. They are both wearing their pajamas, and she cannot see their faces clearly through her blurry vision, but she can feel the cloth against her skin, wiping the sweat and blood from her face, wiping clean her hands. Years later, she will remember the feel of that damp cloth clearly.

Another face peeps cautiously around the door to the room. Strange, orange hair. Wide eyes. Years later, she will remember his face clearly too.

But today she barely sees him, because now her body is shaking with fatigue, and her thoughts are growing clearer, and she hears from behind the walls a man's voice, loud and insistent, calling for an ambulance, saying that he does not have the necessary equipment, and she knows that she wasn't fast enough. She went to the clinic, because she thought it would be faster than waiting for someone to come to her. But they will have to come anyway. And she took too long in getting here. She isn't strong enough, in the end. Not strong enough to save him.

When she gets up and tries to run, to throw open doors, to find her brother, the little girls hold onto her arms like weights, heavier than her brother's body was. Maybe she is weaker now.

"Don't interrupt!"

"Don't worry, please don't worry – "

"You have to wait here – "

"My dad will help him, I promise he will – "

She does not fight them. She does not have the strength to fight them. And when a man comes into the room an eternity later, tall, broad, his eyes kind, and merely stares at her, his face pale, she knows what he is trying to say. When she starts to cry, he kneels down and puts his arms around her, and she lets him. She cries, and can feel his rough beard against her temple, and wishes he were her brother, wishes he were brother, wishes she had been strong enough or fast enough to make all of this not be true.

She wishes she could have said she was sorry.

When the ambulance comes and the medics load her brother into the back of the car, she chases after them, and goes with them, and holds her brother's hand, and talks to him, as though somehow this will all make a difference, even though she already knows it won't. But what else is she going to do?

She does not have a princess's power yet.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Orihime knows that her neighbors and her teachers think it sad that she lives alone, but she doesn't mind. She has taught herself not to feel lonely, because that would make life so much harder, and she owes it to her brother not to be sad anymore. She likes spending time in the kitchen, experimenting with new recipes, and the neighbors can sometimes hear her through the open kitchen window as she hums to herself, or talks to herself, and she knows they think that being alone has made her a little odd at times, but that's okay too.

She knows how to be happy, and so she will be happy.

Orihime knows that her friends at school all think she's a bit odd as well, but that doesn't matter. She has learned how to find a smile for everyone, for every occasion, and eventually smiles wear everyone down. And she knows that nothing that anyone ever says or thinks will really matter, because she has Tatsuki-chan, and Enraku, and her brother's watchful memory, and her own imagination. She has everything that she will ever need.

Or at least, everything that she will need in her brother's absence.

And Orihime knows that Kurosaki Ichigo doesn't remember the expression he was wearing that day when her brother died. How could he, after all? He couldn't have seen his own face. But she remembers it well. That day, he wasn't frowning. He watched her that day with… hurt. Orihime knows that she understands this about him, when most people don't. Kurosaki Ichigo hurts for other people. And because she remembers his face that day, she knows he has a good heart.

Orihime knows that often she makes decisions without knowing that she has made decisions, and only realizes what she's done when the weight of her burdens become too heavy to ignore.

She chose to stop crying in front of her brother's shrine, and she will feel the consequences of that choice.

She chose not to be weak anymore, one day over Tatsuki's body, and the consequences of that choice will follow her the rest of her life.

And one day, sitting in class, watching Kurosaki-kun's strange orange hair moving just slightly in the breeze from the open window by his desk, she chose to put him in her heart, and that choice changes everything.

Orihime knows that not even Tatsuki understands the way she feels things about people, the way she knows what's inside of people, even when they don't know it themselves.

Kurosaki-kun is easier to read than any book. He can wear the same frown every day, and every day she sees something new in it, something beneath it.

He hurts for other people, but most of the time he doesn't realize that he does, and even then he tries not to. But he can't help himself. Just like she can't help herself. And so she has decided that she will hurt for _him. _

Because that is what she does.

Sometimes, at night, staring up at the dark ceiling, Orihime imagines that she is still walking down the street with her brother on her back, and the street seems to go on forever, and every morning is like that morning, every day beginning with a journey that can only end in one way, but that never seems to end.

But then she always makes herself laugh, and hugs Enraku, and rolls over telling herself that in the morning the sun will be bright and it will make her warm, the clouds will be shaped funny and she'll count bunnies in them, and maybe it will rain and there will be rainbows that she can imagine chasing.

And because she tells herself it will happen, it does, whether others can see it or not.

That is who she is.

She is Inoue Orihime. Once upon a time, someone gave her a princess's name, and someday soon the time will come when she has to claim it fully.

Once upon a time, she wasn't strong enough to save her brother, but she was strong enough to carry him.

She is strong enough to carry many people, and so she does.

Orihime knows that Kuchiki-san needs friends, but doesn't know how to admit it, so she never waits for the other girl to say the words before being that friend.

She knows that Sado-kun doesn't keep quiet so often because he doesn't know how to say what he wants, but because most of the time he prefers to listen, and so she always talks when he's around.

She knows that Ishida-kun is very lonely, and so she never puts him in a position where he has to deny it, because she knows that he will deny it, and as cute as he is when he's lying to himself, she doesn't think it's very healthy for him. Someday soon she wants to fix that. She thinks that maybe she knows Ishida better than anyone else does.

And Orihime knows that Kurosaki Ichigo wants to carry the whole world on his shoulders, and that it hurts him every time he fails, but she also knows that the only thing she can do for him is to try to take on a little bit of his worry, even if he never knows that she does it. She likes to think that, somehow, it makes a difference.

But it wouldn't matter if it doesn't.

Orihime knows a lot of things about people, but she knows herself best of all. She doesn't blame herself for her brother's death – that would be foolish, and it would only make her sad. But she learned something on that long walk, with his blood on her skin. She learned that sometimes carrying a burden can make you stronger. Every day you will be stronger, until one day… one day you're strong _enough._

She wants to be strong enough to earn her name.

Strong like Kurosaki-kun is strong, and so she will carry his hurt, and someday it will make a difference.

She let go of her brother in the Kurosaki family's clinic, and she never held him again. But she picked something up there too, and she will carry it until she cannot carry it anymore, and she won't ever regret it, even though she _knows_ now, she knows that some dreams aren't meant to come true.

And having cried her tears once, she decides one night, seeing his face, seeing Kuchiki-san's blood, that she will not cry again, will not let him see any tears.

The burdens that make you stronger cannot be shared.

She knows this, and it will be all right.

Tomorrow will always give her another chance to smile.


End file.
